Israel has 'opened the gates of hell': Hamas warning as leader is killed in strike

Dispatch: As Israel and Gaza teeter on the brink of war, with Hamas
warning that an air strike that killed Ahmad Jabari, the head of its
military wing, has "opened the gates of hell", the Telegraph's Phoebe
Greenwood reports the horrors in Gaza City.

Palestinian medics carry a wounded baby into the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli air strike on November 14, 2012.Photo: AFP

By Phoebe Greenwood, Gaza City

9:39PM GMT 14 Nov 2012

It was shortly before four o’clock when Ghalib al Hatour glanced up from sorting through spare parts at his streetside workshop in Gaza City.

Driving towards him in the distance was a grey, Kia saloon – a new model it appeared. As he bent his head down to continue his task, he was thrown backwards, an ear-splitting blast detonating in the relative confines of the quiet, mostly residential street.

Commander of the Hamas military wing Ahmad Jabari, who was killed in yesterday's attack

When the thick black smoke cleared, Mr Hatour could pick out the severed front of the Kia blazing furiously only yards away. But only the front. The rest of it was gone, strewn in charred pieces across the road, amid a carpet of glass, blood and blackened metal.

Looking around, he saw pieces of undercarriage and exhaust lying next to him. Blood was splattered on the white walls of one building opposite. Fragments of what appeared to be human flesh reached as far as a fourth floor window, above the height of trees in full leaf.

Mr Hatour could see nothing of the two men who had been sitting inside the car. “I had no idea the man inside was Ahmed Jaabari,” he said, pointing to the two deep, narrow holes driven into the asphalt which marked the impact of Israeli missiles that killed the Hamas man.

Nearby Rena Ahmad, a 20-year-old student, told The Daily Telegraph how she rushed to her window after hearing the explosion. She watched as panicked bystanders, mostly teenage boys, dragged two charred bodies in pieces from the blazing wreck. “It was the first time I have seen a dead body and there were only black pieces of them left. My brother and his friends from the neighbourhood were scooping up pieces of flesh from the road. I saw a head, separated from its body, just lying on the concrete,” she said.

“The little kids in my building were crying. It was terrifying for them.”

Within minutes of the blast, the street was swarming with Hamas police, toting guns and fighting off the crowds who had gathered.

As missiles started to fall across the Gaza Strip, the launch of Operation Pillar of Defence was confirmed by the Israel Defence Forces. Jaabari’s death was a targeted assassination, payback for “decades long terrorist activity”.

As many as 20 air strikes were reported; in Zaitoun in the East, Rafah by the Egyptian border and Tal Alhawa in the centre. Palestinian media claimed that up to nine people, including two children, had been killed. One child was reported to be the 11-month-old son of a BBC employee.

As night fell, the skies across the northern border were illuminated by blazes and the regular thud of artillery fired from Israeli naval boats hit unseen targets along the coast.

In Gaza City the muezzins’ call rang out from mosques across the darkening sky: “The martyr Ahmed Jaabari is dead. The one who was killed in fighting is not dead but lives on in paradise. God is great.”

Relatives of those killed flocked to Shifa Hospital, where the bodies of Jaabari, his bodyguard and several others had not yet been identified lay in the morgue.

They emerged, ashen faced, clutching one another’s hands as crowds of young men stood on each other’s shoulders, craning for a glimpse of the scene.

Periodically, cars carrying the injured pushed through the crowds, their horns blazing. Dazed and bloodied young men were dragged out and bundled on to stretchers.

Inside the emergency ward, Dr Ayman Alsahaban warned that footage he took minutes before on his mobile phone may be too much to stomach. “This is a one-year-old girl, if you can believe it,” he said, shaking his head as he watched the film.

It showed a child writhing, struggling to breathe. Her body was almost entirely blackened and crisp. The doctor said she was inside her home in the north near the border with Israel when it was struck by a missile. She has suffered burns to 95 per cent of her body, he said, and would not survive more than a couple of hours.

He flicked to his next video. It is impossible to verify his claims that the young girl having her chest pressed urgently by doctors trying to revive her, blood pouring from her ears, mouth and nose, was the youngest fatality of the evening. He said she was inside her home near the northern border when it was struck. Dr Ayman estimated she was five years old. “We have seen four dead and 11 injured already tonight. We are expecting many more.” He said the death of Mr Jaabari has shocked the city. “He was an icon, a real symbol of strength. No one expected him to die,” he said.

Mr Jaabari’s nephew Mohammed joined a crowd of young rowdy men outside the emergency unit. “There should be no doubt that we will retaliate,” he said. “We will retaliate, we will fire rockets and we will fight until we are killed,” he pledged.

Elsewhere in Gaza, other crowds were forming – this time in queues at the city’s bakeries, familiar with the inevitable shortages that follow Israeli incursions in the Gaza Strip. The borders will probably be closed for the duration of Israel’s operation which is designed to crush Hamas’s terrorist capabilities.

By seven o’clock, the debris of the car that had been carrying Ahmad al Jabari had been swept away. The crowds of Hamas soldiers and shocked onlookers had dispersed and Mr Hatour was carefully knocking the broken glass out of his living room window above his workshop.

“It doesn’t really matter that it was Jaabari who was killed. It could have been any of us,” he said wearily.

“I never believed this truce with Israel would hold. This is what it will be until the world’s final days – us against the Jews.”